“We have metal-working equipment, safety equipment, welding machines.” Tom MacDonald is showing me around his workshop. “It’s essentially a bunch of bikes that have been stripped down for parts, and the good parts survive and the bad parts we chop up and make into cool creations.” MacDonald is the coordinator of the HFX Trailer Share […]
Veronica Simmonds
Posted inNews + Opinion
Common problems
In 1763, when King George III granted 235 acres of land, “for the use of the inhabitants of the Town of Halifax forever,” the bicycle had still not been invented. These days, the Halifax Common is many things for many people, but one thing is certain: the intersections that surround it are not built for […]
Posted inArts + Music
Julianna Barwick quiets all pain
Julianna Barwick says the weather is beautiful in Brooklyn. She just rode her bike for the first time in a long time. But she misses Iceland. Two years ago, she was recording her album Nepenthe there. Sigur Ros producer Alex Somers invited her to record with him and the result is a precious thing. A wandering […]
Posted inArts + Music
Best In Fest
“We just want things that are interesting, things that we haven’t seen here in a while,” says Robyn Mitchell, artistic director of Art in Fest, her yet-to-be- born event. Art in Fest is the visual arts offspring of the OBEY Convention. For its inaugural year it will be hosting select artists in venues throughout the […]
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Mind into Matter: Bodies and Space gets into design from all levels
In the age of the internet when so many of us barely leave our screens, it’s easy to forget that we are embodied. But we take up space, and the question of how our bodies engage with the spaces they inhabit is at the heart of this week’s Mind into Matter: Bodies and Space symposium […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
A plastic goal in a plastic life
I’m not much of a do-gooder. It’s not that I’m a no-gooder, just that I don’t make a big deal of living ethically and convincing others to do the same. I try my best, but beyond composting and riding a bike, I’m not much of an environmentalist. This is why it was a really bizarre […]
Posted inArts + Music
Voices in Longitude and Latitude works through narratives of girlhood
“I mean, anytime your sister offers to collaborate with you on a project you should say yes.” This is sage advice coming from filmmaker Noam Gonick. His sister Marnina is the Canada Research Chair in Gender at Mount Saint Vincent University and their collaboration is a project called Voices in Longitude and Latitude, currently on […]
Posted inArts + Music
Get OUT
“The history of lesbian and gay activism in Halifax has been, to an extraordinary degree, a history of creating and contesting spaces.” Robin Metcalfe wrote this in 1997 in his essay on the exhibition Queer Looking, Queer Acting: Lesbian and Gay Vernacular, which was held at the Mount Saint Vincent University Gallery. That show chronicled […]
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Wikipedia Art+Feminism Edit-A-Thon’s takeover
Wikipedia has a problem. Of the 20,572,652 editors that populate the online encyclopedia, only 13 per cent are women. Organizers of the Wikipedia Art+Feminism Edit-A-Thon event believe that this lack of female editorship results in less content about notable women. “It seems that the ratio of the content providers is being reflected in the actual content […]
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Brazen Burwash
When she was 18 years old, Gwen Lazier Braidwood rode a horse from Belleville, Ontario to Washington, DC carrying an invitation for President Calvin Coolidge. She had never ridden a horse before, but she learned fast, and for 28 days she rode “Tip” through all range of terrain, scaring off would-be bandits in style. This […]
Posted inArts + Music
Migrating through heritage
“Everybody has a living story,” says Jae-Sung Chon, architect and curator of Migrating Landscapes. “Whether it’s in the past or present or the future, everyone can talk about their living conditions and architecture is essentially an envelope that hosts these stories.” Migrating Landscapes is an architectural project that hosts the varied migration stories of Canadian […]
Posted inArts + Music
Home is where the laughs are
There’s something funny going on in Halifax. Almost every night of the week there are people getting silly all around this city—-Mondays at Gus’, Wednesdays at Yuk Yuk’s and Bearly’s and Sundays at The Company House, funny people are getting down and cracking us up. This week the Ha!ifax Comedy Fest will be in town […]